Babies and small children, such as toddlers, gradually learn to eat solid food as they acquire teeth and the fine motor skills needed to pick up the food with their own fingers and hands. Over time they also learn to feed themselves from a food receptacle, such as a bowl, plate or dish. However during the process of learning the skills and discipline needed to feed themselves, a child will often accidentally or deliberately knock the food receptacle off the table or surface on which it is sitting while they are eating. The process of dropping the receptacle onto the floor and the carer having to retrieve it can become a bit of a game, much to the amusement of the child and the frustration of the carer.
In order to minimise the frustration of having to constantly retrieve a dropped food receptacle and to clean-up the consequent mess, various types of prior art suction bases for securing the food receptacle to a table surface have been devised. All suction bases currently on the market, which provide a non-moveable/fixed mounting device for fixing an object to a flat surface, have the object mounted on the suction base unit and use the suction base as the sole provider for stability and support.
Most prior art suction bases which use the mechanism of a push down, pull up movement to create a vacuum, use a spring attached to the central spine between the suction membrane and the suction base plate. The spring enables the membrane to return to its original position once the base is unlocked from the flat surface and also provides firm pressure in the downward movement. The use of a spring requires the unit to be of a height sufficient to contain the spring and to allow the spring to be compressed and return from its compressed state. However this increased height above the table surface affords the child a substantial degree of leverage and it is possible for the child to figure out that by gripping the receptacle and applying sufficient force the suction can be broken. In addition, the increased height of the receptacle above the table surface is rather unnatural and does not teach the child that a bowl or plate normally rests on the table surface.
Bowls which attach to surfaces using suction base units either have a flexible membrane directly attached to the bowl, (usually a separate ring made of flexible material which is friction fitted to the base of the bowl) or the bowl is locked down onto the suction base unit using a bayonet fitting. With the latter type of suction base unit, it often doesn't take long for the child to figure out that by applying a simple twisting action to the bowl it can be removed from the base unit without too much difficulty.
The present invention was developed with a view to providing a suction base unit and receptacle that is of low profile and that is more difficult for a child to remove from the surface to which it is attached compared to the prior art suction base food receptacles.
References to prior art in this specification are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not to be taken as an admission that such prior art is part of the common general knowledge in Australia or elsewhere.